Hackaday links: January 24, 2011

[Paul] wrote in to tell us about his brand new hack hosting service, HackHut. Based on WordPress with some modifications, it is definitely worth keeping an eye on as new features emerge.

Instructabliss

Speaking of project hosting, Instructables are a common source of projects as well as complaints. Instructabliss by [Daid] is an often mentioned solution in our comments, and we thought we would bring it up so commenters don’t have to. We understand why it was made and think it was a clever hack, but we don’t officially endorse it. We survive on Ad revenue, if someone were doing this to us, it would hurt. We’re also not sure about the legalities of such a service, so keep us updated.

Grass Burning Robot

[Sebastian] brings us his grass burning, flame throwing robot. This robot takes in SVG files to create its burn path, and burns away. Not too many details, but be sure to check out the photos on his site.

The instructables are copyrighted materials from the writers of the instructable, not of the website itself. Any user can request to have his/her username blocked from instructabliss. A few did already.

Also note that I will pull the site down if HackADay would use it in its main article links. My intention is not to steal from instructables. Just to provide an alternative way to read it after you found it. Instructables still has the nice “related” sidebar which can show interesting projects.
I also had the intention of keeping the instructable ads in, but I could not get that to work.

fyi, if HaD turns to shit, like instructables did, you can expect us to use HaDBLISS.com to surf your content. I understand the web is financed by ad revenue, but i refuse to be eye-raped as payment for browsing.

For me, instructables isn’t _just_ terrible because of the ads. It’s just a horrible site. Even though I probably have an account there, I never click on the images because you have to login to see them! w.t.f.. I have no love for instructables, and they owe everything to the hacking community.

That was how we felt. I hate having to login just to view pictures. That’s why we created hackhut.com, no one ever need login to read ANY part of the content OR to comment. Oh and no eye raping either, yeah that’s pretty important too!

I was going to say it but nes beat me to it. Every time I get featured on HAD, i get trackbacks from 4-5 sites that are direct rips of HAD postings. Most are caught by my spam filter, the rest i delete. There’s only one true HAD in my life.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery right? Maybe Instrucables will get the hint they are turning more people away now.

The grass burner thing is a cool idea but why go and mess up a golf course? Not only do you spoil it for golfers but give people making things a bad name. Its this kind of moronic disregard that ends up getting things banned.

I use add blocking software and read most of my content from google reader, so they don’t make any money off me in the first place.

I have an acct. with instructables, but their constant nagging login box does drive me nuts. They also do not provide their content, just a place to host other people’s content — if instructabliss offered hosting service and was somehow able to handle the load without the add content, then i would imagine the content providers would shift over.

I was really excited about instructables when it began. I signed up for an account, starting putting things up, etc. But then they implemented the crappy pop-ups, logins, the obstructive content hiding, and generally shitty javascript interface.

Now if I get linked to instructables I disregard it, not even bothering to log in. Your site is a perfect fix.

I have been boycotting instructathing. I encourage others (HaD) to do the same. Their structure is very irritating and not welcoming. Feels like they do not want to share with everyone. Isent’ hacking also about sharing?

To anyone who is against instructables because of the ads: Don’t be stupid, the site lives of ads.

To anyone who calles me a leech: I don’t provide any links from instructabliss back to my own site. The site is hosted on a home internet connection, on a Via C3 on 700Mhz, so when it gets large amounts of traffic it will fall apart. It just provides access to information that is already available.